The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry

Board of Directors

Salvatore Attardo

Bill Bolin

Anna Evans

Hunter Hayes

Jim Prothero

Managing Editor

Kathryn Jacobs

Associate Editor

Rachel Jacobs

Contents:

Fall 2018

Kevin Shyne Lost Keys Feature Poem

Mary Beth Hines Dunmanway, 1914 Editor's Choice A Cry So Close To Song

John Byrne Dance Laura's Lament

Karen Shepherd Apple Harvest

Larry Thacker A Synchronicity

Thomas Schmidt Weaned

Robert Beveridge Ground Rules

Mary Cresswell Blood Memory

Louis Hunt Green Mountains Walk

Thomas Tyrrell Alexandrines

Eric Larson The Doctors Couldn't Reattach His Hand

Will Begley Fount of Wisdom

Yates Young Sam

Martin Elster At Kill Devil Hill

Michael F Gray Forever Autumn

Robbie Gamble Reading Seamus Heaney While Winter Camping

Ron Singer Nature Is Not a Symphony

Nell Wilson Circle Line

Wallace Kaufman Fires of Friendship

Marc Alan Di Martino Cat Person

Poet’s Corner

Welcome to the fall issue of The Road Not Taken.

The Road Not Taken is, as you all know, dedicated to formal and metrical of all kinds: poems which

feature in interesting ways the ongoing juxtaposition of form and content. Sometimes these two

reinforce each other to make a harmonious whole. At other times the conflict between the two

constitutes an ironic commentary, or illustrates the stress inherent in the subject. Either way, sound

patterns layer and alter the obvious meaning of the text until they constitute a commentary of their own.

This issue contains plenty of traditional forms: alexandrine, sonnet, ballad and blank verse, to name just

a few. But it also contains poems that are unobtrusively formal: for instance, rhyming poems with

flexible line length (some of the line combinations add up as pentameter to the ear). The traditional

forms flaunt their forms, acknowledge them, and make good use of them. The hidden use of sound-

patterns on the other hand soft pedal their use of sound-patterns; they prefer to sneak up on you.

In short, this issue of The Road Not Taken tries to offer a variety of skilled approaches to form and

meter and sound patterns of all styles. We hope you enjoy it. --

Kathryn Jacobs Editor Road Not Taken

Kevin Shyne

Feature Poem

Kevin Shyne is a lifelong writer whose work once appeared in national magazines, corporate annual

reports and employee newsletters. Turning to poetry in his retirement, Kevin has had poems published

in Poetry Breakfast, Clementine Unbound, Poetry Porch and Blue Heron Review. Recently elected

president of the Prairie Arts Council, a nonprofit group that promotes arts activity in North Central

Illinois, Kevin is learning that being a poet is about more than writing poetry.

Lost Keys

Forgive me if your name

wriggles free, slippery and silver,

from my aging memory.

Be patient, please

until I crack the mystery

of where I left my keys.

The experts say

these awkward episodes

arise from inattention,

not forgetfulness.

With mind on mid-day meds

braking for a shopping list

bumpered by a book that‘s overdue

cut off by wedding gifts to buy and send,

pulled over by a diagnostic test, flashers on,

my power of recall

is a rush hour traffic jam

slowing to a crawl.

Bear with me in this bottleneck.

I‘ll soon be getting through.

Your name will come to mind.

The keys will reappear as if on cue

while elsewhere in my memory

beloved faces old and new

my dearest inventory,

rock gently, close to shore,

tethered to the mooring buoys

of my reminding story.

Mary Beth Hines

Editor’s Choice (Rachel Jacobs)

A project manager by profession, Mary Beth Hines is a member of the Farm Pond Writer‘s Collective,

and an active participant in Boston-area writing workshops. Her work recently has been, or will be,

published in Aurorean, Blue Heron Review, Gyroscope Review, and Muddy River Poetry Review.

Dunmanway, 1914 Friday morning, light snow on Coole Mountain Changed to drizzle then biting sleet As the girl trudged to school, past cows, townsmen, The royal constabulary on Castle Street, Patrolling the square in their army green, Wool caps on heads, new boots on feet. Their moon, mottled faces, shaven clean, Loomed on necks snapped into uniforms. Eyes down, she passed by, small, unseen, Remembering one boy from a year before. Dark-haired, lithe, he hauled turf with her brothers By day, by night teased kisses from her On Pipe Hill behind tall, sprawling rushes. But yesterday afternoon, in heaving Rain, he stalked into her school along with the others. The class was quick though, prepared for deceiving. Miss Walsh heard the gang coming two minutes out, And the kids jammed the Irish they‘d been reading Under floorboards, then watched the cops scout Through desks and drawers, scan suspect papers, Rip maps from walls, curl fists, shout Strangled threats until they left, failed raiders. When the rain stopped, a weak sun dappled The muddy ruts gashed by collaborators, And the girl stepped outside to whirl, unshackled, By herself in the rocky playground clearing, Her face in the blanched light flushed, rattled.

But her loose hair flew in a blazing ring, Maeve, Fianna, Dierdre of the Sorrows. She squared her shoulders, chin up, glaring. Her long arms were spears, her fingers, arrows.

Mary Beth Hines

A Cry So Close To Song That middle-of-the-night cry tears right through my weeping, mounded flesh stretched full of fresh, Grade A, mother‘s milk, the real deal, pulsing and puddling. Who would have guessed I‘d fall in line at twenty-nine? As if on cue my body grew a body through a wild seed dropped onto my lawn – blossoming black cherry tree fathered by a migratory bird. And my child screams like a gull, all guzzle and swallow, suck and squirm, scrabbles ‗till he hollows my insides out, cracks nipples black and blue. But afterwards, he curls in, silk-skinned, sated, a milky-mouthed songbird, nestling, sedated.

John Byrne

John Byrne lives in Albany, Oregon with Cheryl French, an artist, and Sean Marie, their daughter who

is currently attending Hampshire College. He writes formal poems and plays. His work has been

staged in small theaters around the country and published in journals that are receptive to formal

poetry. Both Cheryl and Sean Marie frequently appear in the poems.

Dance I complicate the steps the leader calls And allemande to left instead of right. I bow when I should offer hands to all And flee as other wax confused, uptight. It‘s age compounding weakness always there That needs commands to come one at a time With ample intervals so mind prepares Analyses of which step‘s likely mine. Now squares and contras both are in the past – The lines and fours reducing down to two Which leaves me waltz and two-step, slow or fast, Where all I need to do is follow you.

John Byrne

Laura’s Lament I‘m saying seven hundred years is quite Enough to be observed obsessively, Past time he found a life excluding me – But let my name be mentioned, he‘s in sight Reporting every step or how the light Enlivens locks of hair the wind blows free And though he‘s silent, his intensity Is redolent of menace, not delight. He‘s now abetted by the learnéd fools Who hammer his devotion into heads That ought to study privacy instead And let me live far from poetic schools. Enough‘s enough I say. You must agree. Now help me find the me-too hash tag key.

Karen Shepherd

Karen Shepherd lives with her husband and two teenagers in the Pacific Northwest where she enjoys

walking in forests and listening to the rain. Her poetry and flash fiction have been published in various

journals online and in print, but most of her work just lives on her laptop. Follow her at

https://twitter.com/karkarneenee

Apple Harvest

A downward pull on limbs, the branches sag -- the weight of apples, red and ripe, can be too much to bear despite their sweetness. Pick the harvest now. Distribute mass by hand to baskets, carry inside. Wash in sink the dust of summer, autumn‘s early rain: the seasons‘ troubles need not be your chore. Remember the mere seeds that came before this fruit created such an ample strain. The tending till the blossoms ripened pink, then core and color‘s deepening expand. Such adoration plays to nature‘s trick: her beauty‘s tenderness is what we see, not heavy burdens making branches snag.

Larry Thacker

Larry D. Thacker‘s poetry can be found in over a hundred publications including Spillway, Still: The

Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, American Journal of Poetry, Poetry South, The Southern Poetry

Anthology, Mojave River Review, The Lake, Town Creek Poetry, and Appalachian Heritage. His books

include Mountain Mysteries, and the poetry books, Drifting in Awe, Voice Hunting, Memory Train, and

the forthcoming full collections, Feasts of Evasion and Grave Robber Confessional. His MFA in poetry

and fiction is earned from West Virginia Wesleyan College. Visit his website at:

www.larrydthacker.com

A Synchronicity

Like streaking planets from lost galaxies secretly living in the twilit woods, firefly swarms wait for you to stumble in, sweet rot in the nose, humidity‘s tongue, a bioluminescent alchemy firing the brain and torching the heartwood, swallowed down on the wing, a pulse aching up from underfoot, cool through the toes, feet, legs, lifting the body, turning you green, brightish. We tried capturing fireflies as children, our mason jars glowing like living hearts, or the all-knowing eyes of forest gods. Tried creating our own found galaxies. Did we ever close our eyes and listen?

Thomas Schmidt

Tom Schmidt is a retired academic (religious studies & literature) who lives in a bee-loud glade in

Vermont. His poems have appeared recently in The Penwood Review, War, Literature & the Arts, Blue

Collar Review, and Poetry & War.

Weaned Old footage of a moon shot shows the tower awash in smoke, slow motion flailing arms release the fragile craft from cradle bower to launch into the dark of untold harms— and glory, yes. But now the tower trembles, the vestiges of vapor dissipate, the arms fall still, its silent stance resembles a mother peering outward from her gate as off he runs. He may look back—he must— or maybe not, who merely took his life from her and left behind a cloud of dust; who may, beyond whatever stars of strife surpassed, return to earth, the primal sea, where nearby, waiting, she will always be.

Robert Beveridge

Robert Beveridge makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH.

Recent/upcoming appearances in Savant-Garde, Other People's Flowers, and The Indiana Horror

Review, among others.

Ground Rules

Keep this in mind: all affairs are illicit. Respect the paths of those who tread beside you. In all the world, the place you choose to tryst Seems overrun by those seeking privacy, too. Times in life when your loved one's missed Elicit reflections—sometimes it's true. Never let the other boyfriend know.

Leave the moment panic strikes—let go Even in the passion of a kiss. Deal with your rejections well—you knew Extremities would lose you friends. But bliss Begets no bounds—the obstacles, though few, Overreach their limits. Again, you knew. Even in the deepest passions, know: Reluctant though you may be, you must go.

Mary Cresswell

Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and has lived for many years on the Kāpiti Coast of New Zealand.

She is a science editor and tech writer who turned to the dark side after retirement and writes poems.

Her latest two books are Fish Stories (ghzazals and glosas, Canterbury University Press, 2015) and

Field Notes: a satiric miscellany (Mākaro Press, Wellington, 2017).

Blood Memory A double riddle in the Anglo-Saxon style *

I nourish the furrows where dragons‘ teeth grow, I gush like a fountain, spill over the ground, Who would have thought there was so much of me in him? You think I am thick but I‘m famously thin. When the battlefield‘s snarling with dogs of war I shout out your name over festering fields, Without me you linger in anguish and die, At the end of the day you have me on your hands. **

Staunch when I stand to temper your mind to muster your arms and move you to glory. Without me as mentor the melee goes shapeless, banners go blank and friend belies foe. North turns to south, senseless and shouting: If I‘m taken down, you‘re dusted and done.

*Answers Blood ** Memory

Louis Hunt

Louis Hunt teaches political philosophy at James Madison College, Michigan State University. He has

had poems published in The Rotary Dial, The Road Not Taken, Autumn Sky Poetry, Snakeskin, Shot

Glass Journal, The Asses of Parnassus, and Lighten Up Online.

Green Mountains Walk

Priest Daokai of Mt. Furong said to the assembly: ―The green mountains are always walking; a stone

woman gives birth to a child at night.‖ Dogen, Mountains and Waters Sutra Green mountains walk too swift for the eye to stay, too slow for thought to comprehend their passage. Because we do not know that mountains walk, we stumble on the way. The stone gives birth to a child. There is no witness to its conception, no midwife to ease its birth, no way to calibrate its slow gradation against the curve of earth. Not knowing that mountains always walk, that stone gives birth to stone in ceaseless generation, we stumble on the way. There is no sign to mark our destination. Green mountains walk. They whisper as they pass that change is born in stone, and stone erodes the hopes we thought were true when we stood still and mountains did so too.

Thomas Tyrrell

Thomas Tyrrell has a PhD in English Literature from Cardiff University. He is a two-time winner of the

Terry Hetherington poetry award, and his writing has appeared in Spectral Realms, Wales Arts

Review, Lonesome October, Three Drops From A Cauldron and Words for the Wild.

Alexandrines

The light licks up whole libraries, insatiable

for information, sweeping through page after page,

shelf after shelf, impatient to acquire it all:

pamphlets, critiques and chronicles of every age,

First World War propaganda, Restoration plays,

ethics, philosophy, mathematics, civil law,

tomes, tracts and treatises: they for one moment blaze

beneath the scanner's light, then go to feed the maw

of Google Books; and yet, uncharred and unconsumed

the scanned originals return to shelf intact,

so glancing at the screen, you'd think the page illumed

intangibly, mechanically, not by the act

of manual labourers, uncredited by name,

save here and there you catch their hands, caught in the flame.

Eric Larson

Eric Larson writes poetry and fiction, and has been published in The Avalon Literary Review.

He teaches literature and writing at Kent State University and Padua Franciscan High School near

Cleveland, Ohio. He is also a musician, photographer, husband, and father of two.

The Doctors Couldn't Reattach His Hand

One weekend back in college, me and Ted

Went to a party 'cause his roommate said

There'd be this girl from physics Ted was into,

Or something—I don't know. And so we went to

This house off College Boulevard where four

Or five lacrosse team players lived. I swore

That we would all regret this, but I bore

It mildly: I had nothing going on.

We pulled up to a bonfire on the lawn,

A massive bro named Kevin, and a blonde-

Haired girl I'd seen around named Allison.

They all were rabid 'cause I guess they'd won

The conference title. Anyway, this Kevin

Walked both of us into the house where seven

Disgusting jock rooms full of people I

Had never met were congregating by

Some kegs or playing cards or sitting there

On filthy couches with a vapid stare

Upon their faces. It was awful. Ted

Was looking for that girl, and then I said,

"What are we doing here? This sucks." But he

Was much more patient with this stuff than me.

And so I stood there, feeling like a fool

And passed the time by watching dudes play pool.

But then this Kevin staggered in to us

And slurred, "Hey...hiccup...everyone...you must

Check out what's going on." Some guy named "Blunt"

Was calling everyone to see some stunt.

I really was so bored I didn't care;

I'd rather be outside than stuck in there.

And so we went outside. This Blunt was standing

In front of everybody on the landing.

He only wore some gym shorts and a cape

Which bore a yellow "B" marked out in tape.

And Blunt was hacking at an old banana

With (swear to God) a three-foot-long Katana.

Then Kevin yelled, "Now listen everyone,

Ol' Blunt here's telling everyone he's done

Long years of ninja training in his youth,

And I say we demand some kind of proof!

So Blunt here's gonna slice this apple, and

He swears he isn't gonna touch my hand."

Immediately I said, "Ted! He's a nut!"

But what was I supposed to do? And what

More noble thing do you think that you'd do

When every guy there's twice as big as you?

So on it went. The music stopped. Then Blunt

Stepped off the steps, and walked out to the front

Of everyone, while Kevin grabbed the fruit.

I thought of leaving, but it would be moot.

Blunt donned a ninja headband, red and yellow

And strode determinedly up to his fellow.

Then Kevin held the apple high aloft.

We all were mute. (One guy, though, had to cough.)

Blunt raised the silver blade toward Kevin, and—

Will Begley

Will Begley is a medieval Latinist and teacher in North Carolina who reads poetry avidly. His poems

and translations have appeared in Spitball, Hobart Park, Minerva, Dappled Things, and Asses of

Parnassus; his only original Italian poem won the Kyser Award in 2015. He holds a Ph.D. from the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Fount of Wisdom While cursing in English and nursing the scald, You wished you recalled Your French 101. You then might have told That ―C‖ isn‘t ―cold‖ On faucets in France. Quelle malchance. Now you know. It just goes to chaud. But sometimes, alas, it‘s how a lass learns, Reflecting on burns, And crossing the sea, you will see that a ―C‖ Means one thing to me, Another to you. Faux-ami! What to do When one becomes two? And making things worse, it‘s a curse that has sprung Up here, in our tongue, So ―tolerance,‖ ―freedom,‖ the ―justice‖ of old Are taps that run cold Except when they don‘t, and nary a spigot Will stay how you rig it. But really I‘m saying I‘m sorry, albeit Too strangely to see it: Of all of these faucets I‘m frightenedest of, The greatest is ―love.‖

Yates Young

Yates Young majored in English Literature and minored in Mandarin Chinese at the undergraduate and

graduate levels. In addition to writing original poetry he translates Chinese poetry. His poems have

appeared in The Caribbean Writer, The Road Not Taken, Ancient Paths, Spitball (The Literary Baseball

Magazine), frogpond (Haiku Society of America), Bear Creek Haiku, and The Hartford Courant. He

resides in Palm Coast, Florida.

Sam

There was nothing about the man That struck the eye. This puzzled people because greatness Should somehow look like greatness. Lacking the flair for catching one‘s eye He could never look like anything. He could never make the things He did look special. At first glance, he appeared an ordinary sort Very short, small and rather spare Below average in most respects. His whiskers were long and luxuriant Matched with sandy brown hair. Often found out of uniform A black felt hat worn down over eyes That were gentle, thoughtful and kind. In time the face could grow on you. To his soldiers he was a firm Quiet, determined sort of man Unusually modest and retired of manner. He never made any sort of speech But improved morale in tangible ways. In a short time, delivery of letters between Home and camp became more efficient. When work was ordered to be performed There was evidence the work made sense. A misspelled last or missing middle name Would no longer deny a soldier pay. He did not speak a great deal Unless he had something to say Weighing his words cautiously. Straight-forward and prompt he Did nothing carelessly, working slowly And could be chatty in the right company. To friends he was not the sullen Taciturn man of legend A long way from home, wife and son

Who couldn‘t leave the bottle alone. To them he was considered affable Becoming silent only when strangers were near Or when formalities were observed. If suspicious of the one‘s motives He could become cold and reserved. He never spoke for effect or to be heard. Those who spent any time with him Could remember nothing other than When he came around things happened. If you asked anything of him, it was done. Once overheard to say - If I had one wish I think I should like to remain thirty-five So that I could be considered intelligent Without seeming fogey-ish. One could picture him sitting under a tree Smoking his pipe and studying a map With elaborate red pencil marks over land And down long rivers leading to the sea. A man equal to the emerging situation Who held no particular views on slavery. His goal had always been to hold together A senselessly fragmented nation.

Martin Elster

Martin Elster‘s poems have appeared in Astropoetica, Antiphon, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The

Centrifugal Eye, The Chimaera, 14 by 14, Light, Lighten Up Online, The New Verse News, The Road

Not Taken, The Rotary Dial, and elsewhere.

At Kill Devil Hills

December 17th, 1903 atop a lonely dune in the Outer Banks, in all the raggle-taggle history of humankind‘s achievements, that day ranks

as one that caused perhaps the most elation. The viewers could be counted on one hand. The news soon faded. But not aviation! The seabirds seemed to understand that manned

air travel wasn‘t some trifle to ignore, although they laughed and chittered seeing us glide a mere ten feet above their private shore against a freezing, blustery breeze. The tide

nonetheless had turned. Now, ever higher, far higher than those herons, hawks and geese who watched that first low effort of our Flyer, we climb and climb and … Will it never cease?

To what strange shores are we ordained to fly? One frabjous day we‘ll reach an alien beach where pelicans dive for dinner, killdeer cry, and gulls, foreseeing garbage, screech and screech.

Michael F. Gray

Michael F Gray was born in Salford, England. An inveterate hill and mountain walker, he eventually

settled in the hills of Derbyshire and took early retirement from his profession in the U.K. Civil

Service, which he combined with voluntary work in the community. He has been writing all his adult

life, mainly poetry. Previous work appeared in various journals, latest of which were Envoi and

Candelabrum (U.K.) Mobius (U.S.A.) and The Eclectic Muse (Canada.).

Forever Autumn

Trees stand tall against the wind and breathe out life that saves the soul of mortal Man who covets death, who seeks to sow the demon seed and casually kill what grants him breath.

The roots of life spread out through time, nourished by earth and atmosphere, but in the shadow of the night the light is failing, life is plagued by pestilence and parasite.

And branches reach out to the sky imploringly -- to stay the sun and reap no dark nor bitter fruit from poisoned earth and atmosphere that shames the trees from branch to root.

The buds of Spring have come and gone too soon to Autumn out of time. The leaves are falling one by one and trees are trembling to their roots, knowing Summer now will never come.

Robbie Gamble

Robbie Gamble‘s poems have appeared in Scoundrel Time, Stonecoast Review, Solstice, and Poet Lore.

He was the winner of the 2017 Carve Poetry prize. He works as a nurse practitioner caring for

homeless people in Boston, Massachusetts.

Reading Seamus Heaney While Winter Camping --after Glanmore Sonnet #6

Too cold to mark much in these slanting lights. Dusk drops like a fatigue. It‘s never noon in winter. Dense pine even precludes the moon. The poet mourned his friends from Irish heights, ‗I will break through‘ he said, ‗what I glazed over.‘ On this ridge I shiver in absences also: my brother, beyond the mist and ice, beyond his broken home on the Snake River; my homeless patients caught and dropped by winter. It‘s cleaner to remember, washed in snow than in broad crowds of clinic, studio and chapel. Memories here no longer founder but rise and migrate like a northward goose diagonally cackling over my house.

Ron Singer

Poems by Ron Singer (www.ronsinger.net) have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in Ascent

Aspirations; Cake; Danse Macabre du Jour; District Lit; The Folded Word; Grey Sparrow;

Snakeskin; The Society of Classical Poets; Waterways, Poetry in the Mainstream; and Word Ways,The

Journal of Recreational Linguistics. Singer‘s 11th & 12th books are scheduled for publication in 2019

& 2020 by Unsolicited Press.

Nature Is Not a Symphony

If you think nature is a symphony, start with hummingbirds --piccolo duets-- in the manner of Mozart‘s bird-call flutes. Then, add some rat-a-tat woodpecker snares. The robin, too, is an obvious choice. But which instrument? If the human voice, have we hatched a choral symphony in the titanic manner of Beethoven, Stravinsky?

But the conceit collapses when minor symphonists evoke canyons -- whining, echoic winds-- brook-burble, sandpaper leaves. Still, for Beethoven, encore, in the Waldstein, Tempest, Hammerklavier, nature and music are seamlessly joined. ―But sonatas,‖ you say, ―aren‘t symphonies.‖ Nor are Schubert‘s, Schumann‘s, cycles of song, where scarcely a note, or zephyr breeze, goes wrong. So, returning, rondo, to our opening theme, ―Nature, as Music,‖ may be the better meme.

Nell Wilson

Nell Wilson studied English at St Andrews and currently lives in Lincolnshire. She was runner-up in

Girton College‘s Jane Martin Prize in 2016 and has had poems published by Measure, Sidekick Books,

Mezzo Cammin, Acumen, and The Moth.

Circle Line

At mercy of mechanics, we begin. Breath-beaten, baking, trapped where hot air flows, we race beneath a city turning in.

Above where twilight builds, the light goes thin, enamelled panels shimmer daylight‘s close. At mercy of mechanics, we begin.

Tiles melt, dissolve in mass of darkening. History is forced, pummelled, bent by blows. We blur beneath a city turning in.

A crowd reflected on a window skin, a memory of soulful buskers‘ echoes - electric melody, cheap mandolin,

and dirty music of the line, ripening, rack-rattling as sodium and spacetime glows. We race beneath a city, seraphim

enclosed inside a labyrinthine sin. The depths of industry. A dark we chose. At mercy of mechanics, we begin. We race beneath a city turning in.

Wallace Kaufman

Wallace Kaufman's non-fiction, poetry, and fiction have been widely published in the U.S., the UK,

Germany, and Kazakhstan. He is the author of several non-fiction books and a sci-fi novel about

genomics.

Fires of Friendship For Diana Coogle, Surrounded by fires in the Siskyous, Sept. 2017 The mindless fires raging in the hills Approach invincibly by day and hour Immune to all our will and high tech power. They do not know the names of what they kill. The thinking and the thoughtless they devour. Nature does not give justice to the just But burns the great and makes life from the dust. Now ash of warning falls on your sweet bower. May your home be safe from tigers and fire.

May early rains come to your rescue soon. Then winter bring the snow you so desire. In spring let fire fed morels be boon

Let peepers sing in hidden evening choir. Let‘s pretend these words make you immune.

Marc Alan Di Martino

Marc Alan Di Martino is a poet and translator currently living in Perugia, Italy. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, the New Yorker, Gravel, Poets Reading the News and many other publications.He contributes regularly to the online journal Verse-Virtual.

Cat Person

It‘s not that I love cats. I love my cat, the way she pierces me with her clear eyes

and bites when she‘s excited, how her belly fat feels in my hands & her domestic size

so perfectly selected for my palm my fingers engineered to navigate her

haunches that lift and shiver, sway and roam free as the trip-hop cadence of her purr.

I love the way she disappears for hours materializing when we sprinkle food

into her dish. I love her haughty, proud imperious demeanor as she glowers

slighted by some lack in our attention - real or perceived - requiring intervention.